Setting up a large ecommerce website? Here are 4 things you must do

Set up a Secure Payment Gateway

If you are selling items from your ecommerce website to customers, the first thing that you must do, before anything else, is set up a reliable payment gateway that enables people to purchase items with credit or debit cards. And you want to be sure that the gateway is secure, slick and fast. Thankfully, with DotGO, you can connect your website with Stripe in a matter of minutes. Stripe, if you don’t know, is a renowned payments platform founded in 2010, used by Deliveroo and Hostelworld – among many others – to process transactions.

It cannot be stressed enough just how easy it is to link your website with a new Stripe account. You must start by setting up your “Test Account”, which entails creating your Stripe account, adding details like business industry, phone numbers, date of birth, bank details, and so on. Much of the information is already filled out given that the DotGO system is linked with Stripe. Once you do this, you will be taken back to the DotGO system.

All you need to do from here is click the “Live Account” option, which takes you back to the account creation page. This time, though, all you need to do is to click the “login” button, and your Stripe account will be live. Just one form and two clicks. It’s that simple!

Set Personalised Shipping Costs

Once you have linked your website with Stripe, it is time to think about devising specific shipping costs that satisfy your particular needs. You may only be selling to customers in your country, or you could have many different countries that you sell to. In each case, every order has to be matched with an appropriate shipping cost. You do not want to lose money on shipping, nor do you want to overcharge customers. This is where delivery bands come in.

If you sell to customers from the UK, a UK delivery band would have already been set up for you. If you also sold to customers in the US, however, you would need to create a delivery band for orders from the US. Every delivery band applies to orders from a specific country or region. Inside the delivery band, you can decide how much one needs to spend to activate free delivery, a fixed standard postage price, whether you want to charge by weight, and how exactly you apply delivery charges to orders with multiple items. You can create as many delivery bands as you need. They are an effective and easy way of devising shipping costs that suit your business.

Set up Instant Messaging

As a new ecommerce website, building a strong customer base is crucial. Customers need to feel like there is a human being on the other end of wire, so to speak, and big online shops often fail in this respect. More importantly, though, customers just want their questions answered as quickly and effectively as possible. If your website comes across as big and faceless and unresponsive, customers are unlikely to visit for a second time.

Enter: Tidio. In similar fashion to Stripe, Tidio is already linked with your DotGO account, which means that all you need to do is visit the “Instant Messaging” section of the editor and follow the login steps. Having a Tidio account linked to your ecommerce website means that customers, whenever they land on any of your pages, will be able to click a mini chat icon in the bottom-right hand side of the screen and start chatting with you. Staying on top of this means that every visitor to your page, whether they buy something or not, will be impressed with how responsive you are as a shop owner. Stuff like that is what, over time, builds a loyal customer base.

Create Discount Voucher Code

A discount voucher code isn’t exactly necessary, but if you are a new ecommerce website with hundreds of great items, launching one is standard practice. Almost every new online shop does it. And this is because discount codes are an excellent way of tempting new visitors to go beyond your home page and look at the items you have. And with DotGO’s system, you can create discount voucher codes that are perfectly suited to the items you have.  

Depending on your needs, you can offer customers a percentage deduction (e.g. 15% off) or a particular price (e.g. £5 off). You can offer free delivery if you like, as well as choose exactly how long the discount lasts for. Having done all of this, use our detailed styling options to insert your discount voucher code into an attractive pop-up, which you can set to emerge when any visitor lands on your home page for the first time. Just like with discount voucher codes, your pop-ups can be styled in accordance with your precise needs.